Edmonton Asked to Hold It In; Mosquitoes Asked Nothing
Edmonton and surrounding areas spent the weekend under an unusual civic request: please stop showering and, if at all possible, stop flushing. Heavy rain had overwhelmed the system, and officials reasoned that the one thing capable of defeating a flood is a coordinated municipal effort to produce less water.
The ask landed during what residents are calling the worst mosquito season in recent memory, which has driven a nationwide run on mosquito dunks. The little doughnut-shaped larvicides are now sold out across much of the country, victims of a TikTok trend called the 'bucket of doom,' in which Canadians fill pails with stagnant water specifically to lure mosquitoes to their deaths.
So to summarize the current Alberta lifestyle: do not flush your toilet, do not rinse your hair, but do maintain a personal bucket of fetid standing water in the backyard as part of a coordinated insect assassination programme. The province has effectively asked its residents to smell worse while keeping a small swamp on the property for moral reasons.
A Fraser River angler, meanwhile, reeled in a sturgeon roughly the size of a chesterfield, which is the only Canadian alive this week permitted unlimited access to fresh water without a guilty conscience.